whistleblower Calls la Montañita Member-owners to action

Mimi Yahn is a writer in Vermont who was the first person to fully connect the dots between what was happening at her local co-op and CDS Consulting / NCG (National Co+op Grocers) / UNFI (United Natural Foods, Inc.). Without her detective work and subsequent articles we and other co-ops would still be in the dark.

You can read her two seminal articles on what happened at her co-op in Vermont:

She has written a letter to our member-owners, which you can read below:

"Dear La Montañita Co-op Member-Owners,

All across the country, food co-ops are being turned into gentrified clones of Whole Foods, led by management and boards who are increasingly distant, dictatorial and disinterested in adhering to the most fundamental tenets of food cooperatives — access to healthy food, egalitarian workplaces, support for sustainable agriculture, participatory democracy, and cooperative governance — except as groovy-sounding marketing hooks.

The notion that co-ops should be hierarchical, corporate entities and that workers and member-owners are outsiders to be “dealt with” or adversaries who should be handled only by the general manager has become a reality in these co-ops.

Another reality is that ill-advised expansions and huge sums of co-op dollars paid out annually to outside consultants are causing unsustainable financial drains which have forced a number of co-ops to default on loans and shut stores. These co-ops respond to the crisis by cutting worker wages and hours (instead of management bloat and benefits) and laying off workers.

Is this new reality in line with the ideals of cooperative governance, of respect for workers and the community that inspired you to become a member of La Montañita?

Your co-op, your sister and brother members, and your community needs you — all of you — to sign the petition. Reinstating democratic, participatory, cooperative governance and the right of co-op member-owners to determine the actions and the future of their own co-op depends on you signing the petition to hold a Special Membership Meeting, remove board members trained by CDS Consulting, and elect new board members.

The shift to a corporate, non-cooperative culture and governance structure that has occurred behind the scenes at La Montañita has been repeated at the more than 100 food cooperatives across the country who have hired the consulting firm, CDS Consulting. CDS consultants are experts at PR, spin, and selling the dozens of services they offer. One of the most lucrative services they sell is the store expansion package, which generates a tremendous amount of revenue for them, but has been disastrous for food co-ops across the nation. Rather than cut back on increasing consulting fees, CDS-manipulated boards are advised to cut back on staff, eliminate member-worker programs, and carry conventional foods.

Some of the services and products your co-op may have already purchased include:

Training your board to adhere to “Policy Governance,” a form of governance created specifically for corporations to give sole operational authority to a single, powerful CEO who answers only to a board, and to ensure that the board has no direct dealings with employees or members. (“The Board’s sole official connection to the operations of the cooperative will be through the General Manager.”) Policy Governance also requires board members to “speak with one voice” and to sign an agreement that they will not voice any dissent outside the board room and that they will obey all aspects of the Policy Governance model.

Going through a lengthy process of changing existing bylaws to a standardized set of bylaws which are nearly identical to all other CDS-manipulated co-ops and which shift governance away from member-owners.

Store expansions which provide tremendous benefits for the CDS architects and store designers and which provide greatly expanded shelf space for UNFI (the distribution company that your co-op has contracted with and which has ties to CDS).

Consulting services for hiring the GM and other management personnel, determining salary levels and benefits packages, contracting with outside companies such as CoCoFiSt to handle bookkeeping and other financial/business services, and learning how to handle “discontented” workers and member-owners.

Ongoing seminars, workshops, and others forms of “training and retraining” for the board members. (“We will use training and retraining liberally…to maintain and increase existing directors’ skills and understanding.”)

Ongoing PR assistance with handling “discontented” workers or member-owners, including how to “deal with” attempts to unionize.

Sign the petition, reclaim your board, and take back your co-op!Mimi YahnVermont"Note: Quotes are from the CDS publication, “CBLD: Policy Register Template,” used for training all boards in implementing the Policy Governance model.